Abstract

There has been an increased interest in the last decade on Lab-on-a-Chip (LOAC) technologies, which concentrate on the detection and manipulation of biomolecules. Impedance detection plays a vital role in these developments. There are various types of impedance sensors, with four electrode systems being the focus of the work presented here. However, in order to optimize a tetrapolar system, the bipolar needs to be examined first. The electric field properties and characteristics of bipolar systems and in particular, the effect of the electrode width, W, and separation, D, are examined in this paper. This is performed using conformal mapping techniques, which are compared with the Finite Element Method (FEM). An analytical numerical equation for the electric field is derived and examined.